To improve productivity, food manufacturers nowadays always use forming machines to help form dumplings. In most cases, dumpling forming machines presently used are configured to form dumplings in sequential steps as below: first, dough or a mixture of flour and water are sheeted through one or more rolling mills, which then turn out a dough sheet of desirable quality and thickness; next, die cutters of predetermined geometric sections, such as round or elliptic, are driven to cut through the dough sheet from which dough pads of corresponding shapes are cut out and then dropped flat an a corresponding number of forming fixtures placed under the cutters, respectively; finally, the dough pads, each conveyed on a mold set thereby to receive a filling in the next step, will be folded over the filling in a closing action of each forming fixture such that a dumpling is first formed in the shape of a “D” or a semicircle (hereinafter referred to as the “D-shape or semicircular raw product” of a dumpling). The whole process as above has also been described in the Chinese patent application No. 200910168437.7 entitled “Dumpling Forming Method and Device” which was filed by the applicant of the present invention on Aug. 20, 2009.
In the process that follows, a manual process is needed to finally shape the D-shape or semicircular raw products into the desirable shapes typical of a handmade dumpling. Usually, hand shaping of a dumpling follows the method described as below: pinching as much as possible the whole arcuate ridge (hereinafter referred to as the “crest”) of the raw product of a dumpling between the thumb and index finger of each hand, a worker compresses the dumpling filling pocket (hereinafter also referred to as the “filling pocket” or the “pocket”) with both-hand palm-side surfaces of the pinching fingers as well as a portion of each palm by oppositely closing both of his wrists. After such compression, the final dumpling product will be shaped to be a real handmade dumpling, typically like a scallop or curved triangle rather than the “D” or semicircular shape of the raw product. Furthermore, the filling pocket, after such compression, is contracted to be tight and juicy, more satiable to people's taste and appetite. It is understandable that diversity in shapes still exist due the more particular manners of compression respective to individual workers. However, filling pocket compression in such manner as described above remains common to all handmade dumplings.
In the prior art, however, the above process of compression still have to be manually realized by human workers and no machine has been developed to date which can take human roles in the final forming of any handmade dumplings. Statistics has shown that, presently, an average of 5 to 6 specialized workers are needed to keep up (cooperate) with a forming machine for continuous production, which has posed a great limit to further improvement in productivity of the industry.